tained by a drone note and by a tala, the rhythm of the song and dance, as sounded by drumming, the clapping of hands, or the stomping of bangled feet. In Song iv Jaya· deva refers to the tala of the handclapping of the cowherd girls as they dance with Krishna.

That the thirteenth-century musicologist Saranga·deva referred, in his seminal textbook “The Ocean of Music” (Samgitaratnakara), to Jaya·deva’s ragas as “formerly well-known” (prak/prasiddha) suggests that the original melodies of the songs in the “Gita·govinda” had already, in no more than half a century, been outmoded. Two centuries later, Kumbha, the king of Mewar, noted in the introduction to the “Connoisseurs’ Delight” (Rasikapriya), his commentary on the “Gita·govinda,” that, since the original melodies of Jaya·deva’s songs were no longer known, he would venture to restore the musical score, to indicate what the ragas might have been, and to define them in his own treatise on music, “The King of Music” (Samgitaraja).

Specific ragas were considered appropriate for certain times of day or seasons of the year, and they were, furthermore, also associated with particular moods or emotions. It thus makes dramatic sense that Kumbha, and indeed all of the other available commentators, would designate the “melody of the Furies” (Bhairavi raga) for Song xvii, a melody categorized in the musicological disquisitions as one suitable for the dawn. And so it would be appropriate that, to that particular melody, a furiously jealous Radha would sing when Krishna comes to her at dawn after a night of lovemaking with her rivals. Likewise all of the commentators designate the nocturnal “vernal melody” _________________